fully conscious movements, fully different time
2023

"fully conscious movements, fully different time” is the first chapter of a project working with the subterranean cave systems in the Cuilcagh Geopark region of Fermanagh and Cavan. It focuses on the compulsion to enter, record, and find unseen space.

Such underground space frustrates the mapping techniques and representation of two or three dimensions - access depends on time and water movement, with passageways subject to both slow and dramatic change, opening and closing for centuries and in seconds. The few published resources become less stable as they age, as maps become artefacts of time and show our human limits in the conception and representation of non-human space. Many miles of space are thought to be unmapped and yet to be discovered. The caves are imprinted with the means by which we can understand them, and are subject to how we care for and use the land above them.

The practice of naming passageways by those who first discover them echoes the tales of cave pioneering that are promoted in tourism. Mixing human and non-human cycling timelines, warnings, folklore, local history and humour, mental conceptions of these caves become “timemarks” on shifting landscape.

This exhibition comprises film and performance to camera; montages of caving literature and improvised free writing; laser cut drawings on fabric.

Photography by Simon Mills. Supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Artist Career Enhancement Scheme award.